American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

privacy has always been a fiction

the reason we oppose some spy powers domestically is because we believe in procedural protections in criminal trials

...

what does collecting metadata on randos from spain have to do with violations of procedural protections?

i think that's one of the reasons to oppose a country spying on its own citizens, not the sole reason. and (slippery slope weeeeeeee!) what if, hypothetically, we accepted the idea that it's ok to spy on citizens from other countries, but not your own, and then all countries followed that maxim? then every government would know the underwear choices of everybody in the world except their own citizens.

and that's just WRONG.

The 4th amendment was once more than a fiction

Rando European snooping has probably been as unsuccessful as the stuff NSA's Alexander has already admitted to:

During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange:

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” said Leahy. The Vermont Democrat then asked the NSA chief to admit that only 13 out of a previously cited 54 cases of foiled plots were genuinely the fruits of the government’s vast dragnet surveillance systems:

“These weren’t all plots, and they weren’t all foiled,” Leahy said, asking Alexander, “Would you agree with that, yes or no?”

“Yes,” replied Alexander.

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/02/nsa_director_admits_to_misleading_public_on_terror_plots/

in an abstract ideal way the deal is supposed to be that a gov't spies on other countries (ideally just the gov't and not randos) but tries to protect its own citizens from same.

maybe the angry reaction from spanish, german gov't et al is an admission that not only do they do zero job protecting their ppl from this intrusion but are probably not doing much peeking into american life either, in return? i mean, who knows.

i harbor this odd confident hope that foreign agencies are able to look into american power more dispassionately and, for ex, game out something like the shutdown more cleanly. ah yes, ted krooss, veddy interestink, tree veeks, tops. but that doesn't seem to be true?

privacy has always been a fiction

ok, why

poor Louis Brandeis!

Well, rumours in Europe are, that the data collected by the US has been given to american businesses, which has given them an unfair advantage. Also, US and EU was negotiating a trade agreement at the moment, and we'd rather that we could do our internal negotiation in peace. Which is an utopic idea, anyway... Also, foreign leaders hate when these rumours happen because they will always be asked "do you think the US is spying on you" and they have the choice of answering 1) No (because I'm stupid and naive) 2) Yes (because I don't trust our allies). It's a stupid situation to bring your allies in, and really, if you think of yourself as the leader of the free world, then respect the rest. Don't spy, or do it right!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/polll-finds-vast-gaps-in-basic-views-on-gender-race-religion-and-politics/

among many other things,

• Just 23 percent overall say it would be a good thing if more nonwhites were elected to Congress; 73 percent instead say it makes no difference to them. Seeing this as a good thing peaks at 50 percent among liberal Democrats (far more, in this case, than the number of nonwhites themselves who say so, 29 percent). Among conservative Republicans, it’s 5 percent.

O_o

The 4th amendment was once more than a fiction

Not for people of color

/privacy has always been a fiction/

ok, why

slavery

what do we care if the government can see you in your undies if the information isn't being used against you?

I grew up in this weird era post-fall of the Soviet Union, where most of my early school was rah-rah Capitalism and Free Markets and by the time I read about the coup and the fall of the soviet empire I had no idea what communism was, it may as well have been historical fiction. The only reasons I could gather why Communism was such a big threat (one warranting destroying the entire planet for, and reminding the populace of this daily) were:

1) bread lines
2) KGB listening to your phone calls

Not having a surveillance state was sort of the ultimate demonstration of why America = Freedom, and how Freedom is a real word that means something.

hat do we care if the government can see you in your undies if the information isn't being used against you?

I've seen what you look like in undies.

fuck privacy, yay Obama is on ILX currency

the more people who can see you in your undies, the less control you have over whether that information is used against you at any point for the rest of your life.

the real threat of collectivization of private property wasn't bread lines or the KGB spying on you - both things that can happen in mismanaged democracies too. the real threat was holodomor and the 3 years of difficult period.

sure glad famine never happened in mismanaged democracies

for my own edification which democracies experienced such cataclysmic famines? i'm not saying you're wrong, but i can't think of anything on that scale.

and both were in such large numbers specifically bc of how the collectivization + political process occurred. neither were natural famines.

do u know where i am from or

well the sample size for cataclysmic famines of that scale is pretty small - there's the Ukraine, China, and probably several African countries but that's about it, right?

xp

zvookster, my xls sheet on you is completely empty except that your handle starts w/ a z and is as many characters as zachlyon.

my point was just that being directly + indirectly responsible for the murder of millions of your citizens through forced starvation + also direct killing is probably a bigger distinction between the US and the USSR than whether the CIA or the KGB spies more.

ireland?

for scale:

Great Chinese Famine: 20-45 million
Holodomor: 2-6 million
Irish Famine: 1 million

ilx

so i thought i'd been posting here long enough that my civil libertarian bona fides were well enough established, but maybe i just wasn't being clear -- i'm obviously against the indiscriminate collection of information on citizens by their governments, but there's a reason for that, and it's not that i want my "privacy". it's that i think that the government/cops should not be allowed to collect information that can be used to build a case against you without showing probable cause and getting approval from a judge. to me that's what the 4th amendment means and i feel strongly about that. and i don't think the government should be collecting this sort of information indiscriminately (ie as the NSA has done) because as j points out, that information is just begging to be used in one way or another. in the particular case of the US govt collecting info on foreign nationals, i just don't understand whose rights are being compromised. if it turns out that we're alerting the spanish government to information we pick up, then that's pretty lame and we probably should not be doing that, but that also sounds like something the spanish people could take care of legislatively if they felt strongly about it

OK fine -- you can still be my secretary of state.

you'll have to keep those undie pics i sent you under wraps or i'll have a tough time getting confirmed

for scale:

Great Chinese Famine: 20-45 million
Holodomor: 2-6 million
Irish Famine: 1 million

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), 30. oktober 2013 00:49 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That still means a far larger share of the Irish population died...

Was the irish famine caused by politically motivated redistribution of resources? Seems like with smaller populations natural causes may have proportionally worse impacts. But in the case of china and the ukraine, you had actual govt policies driving the famine.

yo I've got this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Causes_and_contributing_factors

From what I've learned the Irish famine had quite a lot to due with being under colonial rule by a country who didn't give a shit. But that's colonialism, and the link between capitalism and colonialism has weakened quite a bit during these last hundred years.

Well, you could say that the Holodomor was an act of imperialism. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 and (arguably) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1770

Rest easy, NSA's Alexander insists spying on Spanish & German people was done with assistance of their governments to catch terrorists. No data on whom they caught via this method offered or a defense of spying on Merkel's cellphone.

World leader: Do you spy on us?
Obama: I don't know
World leader: Seriously?
Obama: Do you spy on us?
World leader: You can't answer a question with a question.
Obama: I just did.

So you think Obama's cellphone is monitored, and that's ok?

Europe to world: I cant believe he spied on me!
Rest of world to europe: Oh, honey...

thanks to 'citizens united,' the GOP might get destroyed . . . by rich trustfund objectivists? the irony

http://www.vocativ.com/10-2013/gop-scared-conservative-kids/?test

So you think Obama's cellphone is monitored, and that's ok?

Not sure if it's technically possible to monitor his cellphone but if it is then it is likely that the US monitors it. Other countries would absolutely monitor it if possible. Monitoring of all sorts should be expected.

Not really sure if it's okay as much as it's part of the job description.

sebelius apparently just said the word "whatever" in testimony. so, look out for the memes on that one i guess.

Secret Santa gift for Angela

http://covers.powells.com/9780767900416.jpg

Do they even let the president have a person cell phone?

Hmm, he may have a super-secure $3500 Blackberry, but that was a few years back. I wonder what he has now?

http://www.thekidswindow.co.uk/images/CMScontent/Image/469369~Tin-Can-and-String-Telephone-Posters.jpg

Secure! Except for the shouting.

Obama should just have a truckload of single-use disposable cell phones. An aide could carry a couple dozen in a briefcase and always be within X number of feet of him, just like with the 'football'.

He should have a pager, and then when someone wants to get a hold of him they would have to send their number in a code where you jump over the 5-button, and then he would have to go to a payphone a few blocks away and call them. Never the same phone twice a day!

well, he's got a truckload of Obamaphones he gives to poor black people.

http://johngushue.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/04/maxwell_smart_with_shoe_phone.jpg

Graham has done his part to placate the most conservative faction of his party, vowing earlier this week to block every Obama administration appointee until survivors of the 2012 attack in Benghazi testify before Congress.

this fuckin guy